- From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:42:21 -0400
- To: "Charles McCathieNevile" <chaals@opera.com>, "Maciej Stachowiak" <mjs@apple.com>
- Cc: "Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, public-html@w3.org, w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
aloha, chaaals! let me reiterate my original proposition, which is archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jul/1135.html ToolTip exposition should be treated as a User Agent question, rather than one which can be addressed via HTML -- a user should be able to set their user agent to display ALT as tooltips, display TITLE as tooltips, display ALT or TITLE (whichever is longer) as tooltips, and display no tooltips... how individuals interact with a document instance is as varied as there are document instances -- why outlaw a practive that has tangible benefits for a wide spectrum of users? just as one can set one's user agent to render images or not to render images, one should be able to specify the manner in which ALT and TITLE are either exposed or ignored... this is a question of basic usability -- if the markup is there, there must be an easy and immediate means to expose the markup, whether aurally, tactilely, or visually... icons are cultural conventions that often serve as shorthand for an action or the firing of an event -- if i select a graphically defined hyperlink of a phone, it really doesn't affect my experience if the ALT text for that graphic is NOT "telephone", but "Company Phone Directory" -- ok, you may reply, the ALT should be "telephone" and the TITLE "Company Phone Directory", but most screen readers do NOT allow individuals to query for ALT and TITLE seperately -- it is usually an either/or proposition, speak ALT, speak TITLE, speak longest, which is obviously an insufficient exposition mechanism -- a user should be able to set one or the other as default, but should also be able to query the object for the other. another place where the user experience should be enhanced and made more flexible when it comes to the expansion of ABBR and ACRONYM; currently, many scren readers that support ABBR and ACRONYM offer the user only a single toggle: "expand contents of ABBR" and "expand contents of ACRONYM" when a more efficacious setting would be "expand inline", "signal the presence of expansions by: [combo box of options]"; and, of course, the ever important, "expand on demand (in response to keystroke [enter keystroke here]"; even titles added to repetitious hyperlink text (for example, multiple "Sign In" or "Read More..." to provide extended contextual information such as: <a href="pc.html" title="Sign into Personal Checking">Sign In</a> and <a href="more-sbc.html" title="Read More About Small Business Checking" >Read More...</a> are not queriable; if one wants to hear the TITLE defined for a link, there should be a simple querying mechanism, rather than the far more common choices offered the user: "speak hyperlink text" "speak title" "speak longest" optimally, in a "List of Links", a user would be able to toggle between the display of hyperlink text and the TITLE defined for the link (if present) obviously, setting your screen reader to read TITLE over hyperlink text inline will cause severe dislocations and interruptions in the rendering of a document instance, since the user is relegated to an either/or choice... the main point is, there should be no restriction on the means of exposing ALT and/or TITLE, other than the implementor's creativity and imagination, provided that user agents are capable of providing multiple options for their exposition as well as for ignoring them altogether... no one can acurately predict who will be interacting with one's document, nor how that interaction will take place -- it is up to the markup language to provide a mechanism for providing a means of annotating objects with quote hidden unquote metadata and/or descriptors, and it is up to the user agent to provide the user with a flexible means of accessing that metadata and/or descriptor; tooltips aren't inherently evil, and there are use cases where a user will need the contents of ALT or TITLE exposed visually to a user, in order to clearly and unambiguously communicate the functionality or change in viewport which may occur in response to user interaction, so that that interaction is as informed as possible... just as ALT and TITLE should be available to a screen reader user whether or not image loading is turned on or off (something over which a user in a locked-down situtation may have absolutely no control, so too should ALT and TITLE be made available to a user who is capable of perceiving the graphic, but who doesn't understand what it is intended to signify... and, obviously, exposition of this content in a ToolTip is ONLY one means of providing ALT or TITLE to the user -- the contents of one or the other or both could be expanded in the status line or any number of means that do NOT require a MouseOver (such as OnFocus); the bottom line is that the user should not only be given a choice of how to expose the contents of ALT and TITLE and ABBR and ACRONYM and HR OnMouseOver AND OnFocus, but how to expose the contents of ALT and TITLE by using the keyboard to place focus on the item for which ALT or TITLE has been defined, in a less obtrusive manner than a ToolTip, and in a manner that is a more stable and longer-lasting than a ToolTip, provided that, if it is a ToolTip the user wants, it remains available to the user as a user agent option... gregory. ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html ----------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Monday, 30 July 2007 21:43:40 UTC